Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android phone announced

Its not just the phone that’s seen a name change though – the Rachael UI that we’ve seen in a number of leaked vids has changed its moniker to UX (for User Experience), and will apparently evolve across Sony Ericsson’s product portfolio over time, and will appear in both future Android and Symbian handsets.

Specwise, we’re getting much of what we expected, including a super-speedy 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 4-inch touchscreen, 8.1 megapixel camera with flash, 3G and Wifi.

However it’s certainly the rather lovely UX interface, laying over the top of Android’s OS, that grabs the attention with this phone.

It brings entertainment to the forefront of Android, something the OS has perhaps been a little weaker on in the past, and just like the rather lovely leaked videos – an official vid on the teaser website (now packed with juicy X10 info) shows the UX seemingly living up to previous expectations.

UX works around two signature applications called Mediascape and Timescape. The latter works similarly to Motorola’s Motoblur bringing all you communications with one person in to one place

This includes photos, emails, texts, tweets and Facebook convos, which you can filter and use as you see fit.

Even more impressive is the intelligent face recognition that will recognise up to five faces in any picture, and connect them with you social phonebook so it will crop up in your related communications with that person.

Mediascape on the other hand sees the phone pulling all your music, photos and videos, both locally and online, and offers up suggestions from YouTube and PlayNow – very similar to the leaked teaser vid we saw yesterday.

The Xperia X10 will come running Android 1.6 to begin with, which is a bit of a let down, as is its lack of multitouch, but here’s hoping this comes in later updates.

You’ll be able to pick up the Xperia X10 in the first quarter of 2010 in a choice of black or white. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the finished product turns out to be as impressive as all the videos suggest.

Head over to the blogs for all the videos, check out the official website and let us know what you think to the Xperia X10 below.

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home